EPA

‘Justice is alive in this country’

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a controversial bill that hands sweeping authority to Ukraine’s prosecutor general over the country’s independent anticorruption agencies.

This triggered the largest antigovernment protests on Tuesday since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. More protests are expected Wednesday.

The new legislation, now law, gives the prosecutor general power to control and reassign investigations led by the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

NABU and SAPO are two key institutions that have long symbolised Ukraine’s post-Euromaidan commitment to rooting out high-level corruption. Critics say the move strips these agencies of their independence and risks turning them into political tools.

Protests erupted in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, and Odesa, with demonstrators holding signs reading “Veto the law” and “We chose Europe, not autocracy.”

Many saw the legislation as a betrayal of Ukraine’s decade-long push towards democratic governance, transparency, and European Union membership.

Just one day prior, Ukraine’s domestic security agency arrested two NABU officials on suspicion of Russian links and searched other employees.

Zelenskyy, in his Wednesday address, cited these incidents to justify the reform, arguing the agencies had been infiltrated and that cases involving billions of dollars had been stagnant.

“There is no rational explanation for why criminal proceedings worth billions have been hanging for years,” he said.

But watchdogs and international observers see a different danger.

Transparency International Ukraine warned that the law dismantles critical safeguards, while the EU’s enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, called it “a serious step back”.

The EU, G7 ambassadors, and other Western backers emphasised that NABU and SAPO’s independence is a prerequisite for financial aid and EU accession.

Despite Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka’s assurances that “all core functions remain intact,” disillusionment is growing.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, declared it “a bad day for Ukraine”, underscoring the stark choice Zelenskyy faces: Stand with the people – or risk losing their trust, along with Western support.

The son of a British couple detained by the Taliban five months ago has told the BBC that he fears they may die in prison.

Peter Reynolds, 80, and Barbie, 76, were arrested on 1 February while returning to their home in central Bamiyan province, Afghanistan.

Their son Jonathan Reynolds said their health was rapidly deteriorating, with his father suffering serious convulsions and his mother “numb” from anaemia and malnutrition.

It is not known exactly why they were detained, and a Taliban official told the BBC in February that the group planned to release the couple “as soon as possible”.

The UN has also warned that they could perish “in such degrading conditions” if they do not receive medical care at once, calling their detention “inhumane”.

Mr Reynolds said it had been a “harrowing and surreal” five months waiting for the release of his parents, who lived in Afghanistan for 18 years, where they had citizenship and ran education projects.

One of these projects involved training women and children and had apparently been approved by local authorities, despite the Taliban banning education for girls over 12-years-old and not allowing women to work.

Mr Reynolds said his parents had been held in harsh conditions – including a maximum security prison – despite being “deemed innocent” by a judge and facing no charges.

“My dad was chained to murderers and criminals,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, adding that they had at one point been held in a basement for six weeks without sunlight, and not allowed out.

The couple revealed “just how bad their health is” when they last had contact with their children on 15 June, Mr Reynolds said.

“My dad’s health is deteriorating fast in particular,” he said of the 80-year-old, who has a history of minor heart attacks.

“Now he’s maybe got something like early Parkinson’s – tremors and shakes down the right side of his body, his arms and face,” he told BBC Breakfast.

He added that his father spent “half an hour convulsing on the prison floor” before his wife called for a prison guard to move him onto a “mattress pad on the floor” serving as a bed.

Mrs Reynolds “has blue hands and feet to do with anaemia, malnutrition, just not getting the right healthcare,” he added.

Mr Reynolds said he did not know his parents’ exact location – and that he was unsure “that the demand has been made for their immediate release”.

“Every week it seems like we’re told ‘just wait two or three more days now… just hang tight’.

“Week after week we’re told that – and they’re still in prison.”

However, he said he was grateful to the Foreign Office (FCDO) for the level of communication with the family.

The couple have both had birthdays in prison, and last week marked their 55th wedding anniversary; they married in Kabul in 1970.

Mr Reynolds said: “I’m thankful they were together, but they’re certainly not free.”

The UN likewise warned on Monday that the pair’s health was quickly declining, and questioned why they were being held at all.

“Without access to adequate medical care, they are at risk of irreparable harm or even death,” read a statement by the UN’s human rights body, which called for their immediate transfer to a civilian hospital.

“We see no reason why this older couple should be detained at all, and have requested an immediate review of the grounds of their detention.

“It is inhumane to keep them locked up in such degrading conditions and more worrying when their health is so fragile.”

It added that it had raised the couple’s case with the Taliban and the UK.

Taliban official Abdul Mateen Qani said in February: “A series of considerations is being taken into account, and after evaluation, we will endeavour to release them as soon as possible.”

The FCDO has been approached for a response.

The UK shut its embassy in Kabul and withdrew its diplomats from the country after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

The FCDO says support for British nationals in Afghanistan is therefore “severely limited” and advises against all travel to the country.

If convicted, Fernando Ramirez could face multiple sentences of life imprisonment.

A man accused of deliberately driving his car into a crowd of pedestrians in the United States, outside a Los Angeles nightclub in California over the weekend, has been charged with 37 counts of attempted murder, according to prosecutors.

Fernando Ramirez, 29, a resident of Orange County’s San Clemente, was also charged on Tuesday with 37 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. If convicted, he could face multiple sentences of life imprisonment.

The suspect is accused of intentionally driving his car onto the pavement as partygoers were leaving the Vermont Hollywood venue at the end of a reggae hip-hop event early on Saturday. The motive for the attack, which injured 37 people, remains unknown.

Ramirez, who is currently being held without bail, will be arraigned on Wednesday. The public defender’s office said they have not been appointed to represent him.

“When he drove that car onto that sidewalk, he aimed it at a whole sea of pedestrians,” LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in announcing the charges.

The car came to a stop after colliding with several food carts, which became lodged underneath the vehicle, and bystanders attacked the driver, police said. A total of 37 people were hurt, with injuries ranging from minor abrasions to serious fractures and lacerations, prosecutors said. The criminal complaint alleges that Ramirez inflicted great bodily injury on eight of the victims.

Police said officers dispatched to the scene found that Ramirez had been shot while being assaulted by onlookers and was himself taken to a hospital, his condition unknown. A man suspected of shooting the motorist fled the scene on foot, according to police, who were still looking for the attacker on Tuesday.

“We understand that this brazen act has shaken the community and but for the good grace of God, this could have been a mass casualty incident,” Hochman said.

Among those injured, 23 people were taken to hospitals, said Ronnie Villanueva, interim fire chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell said, “It’s truly a miracle that no one was killed that day.”

Ramirez has a criminal history that includes a battery and gang-related charge in 2014, an aggravated battery conviction for a 2019 attack on a Black man at a Whole Foods grocery store in Laguna Beach, California, and a domestic violence charge in 2021, records show.

Ramirez “has proved to be violent to strangers and family alike and clearly has a lack of concern for the safety of others”, Orange County prosecutors said in a court filing for the 2019 attack.

A 2024 drink-driving case and 2022 domestic violence charge were pending at the time of the nightclub crash, according to records.